


Kiss With A Fist

by Miraculous_Max (Maximilian_Alexander)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Black Eye, Buff Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Emilie Agreste Lives, F/M, Face Punching, Fight or Flight, Fluff, Gabriel Agreste Has Regrets, Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth Redemption, Happy Ending, Hawkmoth Defeat, Hurt Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Identity Reveal, Kissing, LITERALLY, Light Angst, News Media, Nightmare Adrien, Post-Hero's Day, Post-Sandboy, Pre-Relationship, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maximilian_Alexander/pseuds/Miraculous_Max
Summary: “Holy shit, Adrien, are you okay?!”Instead of answering, the model squeezes his eyes tightly shut and groans, the pain belatedly hitting him full force.Holy shit is right.





	Kiss With A Fist

For a moment, a variety of different colors flash through his vision. Then, almost immediately after the colorful light show fades out, he blacks out for a solid ten seconds. When his eyesight comes back to him, he feels disoriented and tense, the sidewalk’s gravel digging into his back and scalp. The sky’s blue hue as well as the fluffy clouds painted over it seemed too bright all of a sudden, and that, combined with the rather gross feeling of something wet trailing down his upper lip, has him feeling **overwhelmed**.

“Holy _shit_ , Adrien, are you okay?!”

Instead of answering, the model squeezes his eyes tightly shut and groans, the pain belatedly hitting him full force. 

Holy shit is right.

“Hey guys, what’s going— _Dude!?_ Alya, what the _hell_ happened to my bro?!”

“I don’t know! I mean, I _do_ know, but I don’t know _why_ she would—”

“Guys,” Adrien interrupts. Despite the weakness in his voice, the two immediately snap to attention. “Could you tone it down? And maybe offer some help while you’re at it?”

Half an hour later, Adrien is sitting on the school steps, pressing a bag of ice wrapped in a towel against his swollen nose. Thankfully, it’s not broken, but he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain to his father how he ended up with two black eyes.

He _certainly_ doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain to his father that he got two black eyes because he frightened a very tiny teenaged girl _so_ badly she _**punched him in the face,**_ then ran as fast as her legs could carry her in the opposite direction.

He _really_ doesn’t think his father would be pleased with that, no sir. 

“Okay,” Adrien says, breaking a silence that had befallen the trio not too long ago. He turns to look at Alya. “ _You’re_ her best friend. Do you have _any_ idea about what I apparently did to scare the crap out of her so badly?”

Alya winces.

“Sorry, Sunshine. I’m just as clueless as you are.”

Nino scrunches his nose up in confusion.

“Scare who?”

“Marinette,” Adrien sighs out in response. It sounds a tad bitter, but considering the awful throbbing from his nose, he thinks he’s well within his rights to be a little resentful.

“Whuh— _**Marinette?!**_ ”

Adrien immediately hunches his shoulders over his ears and hisses at the volume. Nino quickly takes the hint and makes an apologetic hand gesture, scooting away from his friend for good measure. 

“Me and Marinette were talking about the akuma last night,” Alya said, deciding she’d do the model a favor and do the explaining herself. If anything, it’s only fair. “Adrien kind of popped up behind her to say hi and patted her shoulder, but when she turned to look at him, she _freaked out_. Didn’t even say a word. It happened so quickly, I’m still not sure if I saw that right.”

“You did,” Adrien mumbles. “I definitely saw her fist coming. She was just too quick for me to do anything about it.”

Nino, strangely, doesn’t seem shocked by this information. In fact, he seems even a bit amused, which is kind of rude considering his _best friend_ had just been _knocked out_ for a few seconds by a petite (and surprisingly strong) fashion designer half an hour earlier. 

“Okay, yeah, I imagine she _would_ hit you considering what happened last night. Especially if you did that freaky thing where you pop out of nowhere.” 

Alya and Adrien’s eyes hone in on him like missiles. Adrien’s holds confusion and slight betrayal, while Alya’s look outright dangerous.

“Is there _something_ my boyfriend isn’t telling me?”

“Er,” Nino coughs, nervous. “Well, I mean, didn’t you read the article? Well, I get Alya, you were probably busy all night sorting all the firsthand accounts people were sending to you through the Ladyblog. But Adrien, dude…”

He pauses, then sighs and takes out his phone, quickly pulling up a web article detailing a specific event that happened during the akuma attack last night. He holds it out to Adrien.

“Take a look, man. You’re definitely going to want to read this.”

Cautiously, Adrien takes the phone and removes the ice from his face so he could read, giving Nino one last confused glance. Alya leans in to read it over his shoulder, eyes calculating.

The first thing he catches sight of is a blurry pink figure, and another blurry figure dashing after the other. Unfortunately, despite the poor quality of the photograph, it’s immediately obvious to him who the two in the picture are.

_**What A Nightmare!** _

_Last night, when Paris was once again being attacked by an akuma, witnesses caught sight of one of the strangest occurrences of the evening. A small girl in her pajamas was seen tearing through the city streets, being chased after a nightmare._

_That in itself wouldn’t be too strange, considering the akuma of the day, Sandboy, was capable of turning whatever you were doing or thinking about in the moment into a total nightmare! But what makes this such a strange, and admittedly funny sight, was this nightmare was not a giant spider, ghost, or any other creepy unnatural thing._

_This was a nightmare version of Adrien Agreste! And he was taking chase after a teenaged girl halfway across Paris!_

Oh, fucking hell.

This explained a lot.

He scrolls down and gulps, realising that the story didn’t just end there. He contemplated not reading the rest of the article, but knows he probably should. 

For one, he’s going to have to explain to his father that it was _not_ Marinette’s fault for punching him in the face, and he’s going to need a lot of supporting evidence for that. And secondly, he’s going to have to know what to avoid doing around her from now on, given that she’s apparently _traumatised_ by the sight of his face.

… God, Hawkmoth just _had_ to ruin everything, didn’t he? And they were becoming much closer friends, too…

_Eyewitness accounts say that the girl had managed to retreat into an old Chinese massage parlor, seemingly escaping the evil clutches of this nightmarish version of Paris’ unofficial sunshine boy._

God, did _everyone_ call him that? He thought that was just an Alya thing.

 _Unfortunately for the girl, that did not seem to be the case. In fact, the nightmare had decided that, in the face of a locked door, the best course of action was to,_ of course _,_ ** _break it down_** _and_ ** _claw_** _their way through anyways._

Adrien bites down on his tongue to keep in a horrified squeal, eyes practically bulging out of their sockets as he read and reread the paragraph over and over again, hoping that he was mistaken.

But no. No, he read it right the first time. That was most definitely what the article said had happened. 

He takes a moment to shut his eyes and take in a deep breath, ignoring the ache of his face as he sends a silent, apologetic prayer Marinette’s way. He’s not an overly religious boy, but if there’s a tiny cat god of destruction in existence, then hopefully there’s some higher power looking after his poor pigtailed friend. 

He turns the phone off and hands it back to Nino, believing he has enough proof already to convince Nathalie and his father that it was not Marinette’s fault. Alya makes a noise in protest, having still been reading, but doesn’t complain any further, instead taking out her own phone.

“So,” Adrien says, breaking the silence and placing the ice back against his face. “I can count on you guys to tell Marinette that I forgive her for punching me, right? And that she doesn’t really have to apologise, since it’s… not really her fault?”

“For sure,” Nino says, nudging Alya to bring her back into the conversation. She scowls and waves his hand away from her shoulder, too engrossed with the article. Nino rolls his eyes. “We’ll _both_ make sure to tell her, no worries.”

Adrien smiles thankfully, then frowns at the sight of a silver car driving up. At the very least, he’s lucky Marinette had punched him _before_ he was getting picked up, because he doesn’t know what his bodyguard would have done to her otherwise. 

“Oh, shoot, and could you tell my fencing instructor what happened too? I missed it because… Well, you know.”

“No problem, I’ll go in and tell him now. See you later, man.”

“Bye, Nino,” Adrien says. He looks down at Alya and raises an amused eyebrow. “And _**bye**_ , Alya.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Bye, Sunshine. Make sure your dad doesn’t ruin my girl’s career over this,” Alya jests, smirking. It’s a tense enough expression that Adrien can tell she’s actually slightly worried about that. And… he can’t blame her.

“I will,” Adrien promises, with all the false-confidence his can muster. At the sound of his ride’s horn, he gives one last wave and turns away. 

Time to face the music.

* * *

Gabriel Agreste was not a very patient man. He didn’t like excuses, unnecessary conversation or details, and he _certainly_ didn’t like stalling. 

So he wasn’t very pleased by the absolute silence that followed when his son refused to answer his question.

“I will repeat this one last time, Adrien,” Gabriel says. “Who _dared_ to damage your face?”

“It wasn’t her fault,” Adrien blurted out suddenly. “She, last night, there was—”

“I don’t want to hear any excuses!”

Adrien flinches at the sharp tone, but instead of curling up like usual, he surprises his father with a bout of anger. 

“It’s _not_ an excuse! There was an _article_ on it!”

 _That_ gets Gabriel’s attention. He doesn’t remember there being anything scheduled regarding his son for publishing, so that would mean…

“You— you remember Marinette, right?” Adrien asks, eyes pleading and seemingly on the verge of desperate. “She’s… She’s one of my really good friends, but last night she must have been thinking about me or something and got hit by Sandboy, because a nightmare version of me appeared and… pretty much traumatised her. But you’ve met her! You _know_ she wouldn’t ever even _think_ to intentionally hurt me! She’s a really kind and gentle person!”

He knows the article Adrien had mentioned, mostly only because Nathalie had informed him about it in case it were to damage the company. Thankfully, it was widely accepted that this nightmare being was _not_ his son, and did nothing to harm his image.

Or, at least he _thought_ it would do no harm.

When Gabriel doesn’t immediately respond, Adrien continues, getting increasingly nervous.

“I didn’t know, I swear, I just surprised her and she saw my face and… and she freaked out. Which _isn’t_ her fault! Because, I mean, if you read the article, it says that he— _it_ tore down a locked door to get to her, so it’s no wonder she’s scared of— scared of—”

Adrien trails off, his voice choking up and his eyes going unfocused and slightly glassy.

“She’s _terrified_ of my face, now. It’s not her fault. It’s,” Adrien’s eyes grow angry once again. “It’s _Hawkmoth’s_ fault.”

There’s an impact to those words, but Adrien doesn’t have a clue. It hits his father like a battle axe, who stares at the purpling color circling over his son’s eyes and on his nose. 

Gabriel doesn’t think he’s felt guilt like this in a long time. 

“Please, father,” Adrien continues on, unaware of the inner turmoil he had sparked in the man. “I know you’re angry and want to do something about it, but out of everyone you could blame, Marinette is _not_ one of them. She’s another one of Hawkmoth’s victims, just… this time, with the added baggage of traumatic memories, instead of memory loss.”

Marinette is a brilliant designer, skilled and efficient, and would go far in the future. She’s all smiles and kindness, passionate and, as any teenager, excitable. And she’s one of his son’s closest friends. Adrien doesn’t have very many of those.

If his son were to ever find out who he is, and therefore what he had done to damage that relationship, Gabriel doesn’t believe that Adrien would forgive him, regardless of his goal.

“Very well,” Gabriel says, finally. “I won’t press any charges, then. However, given the… _violent_ reaction she had, I believe it may be best if she were to attend therapy sessions, and is exposed to you in a safe environment. Nathalie will arrange to pay for those sessions, and when you are healed, Mlle. Dupain-Cheng will begin attending your photoshoots as well to increase in-person exposure. This will also double as valuable experience for her future career. You are dismissed.”

Despite the painful bruising on his face, Adrien’s smile lights up the room. He thanks his father, then leaves.

Gabriel slumps into his work chair, removes his glasses, and rests his face against his hand, a heavy feeling in his chest.

Not for the first time, he thinks of finally letting Emilie go.

* * *

Months later, Adrien and Marinette are sitting side-by-side on a park bench, enjoying a shared ice-cream cone, closer friends than they’ve ever been in the past, and not-so-subtly dancing around their feelings for one another. 

It’s been a month since Hero’s Day, when Hawkmoth himself had looked at Ladybug’s offer to redeem himself. It’s been a month since Hawkmoth had broken down, kneeling to the ground, thinking of his son and how far he had gone. It’s been a month since the villain had finally relinquished the butterfly brooch, revealing himself to be Gabriel Agreste to the heroes. It’s been a month since the man had showed the heroes _why_ he had been so desperate, leading them to the hidden room where his beloved Emilie rested in a magical coma.

It’s been two weeks since Emilie and the peacock pendant had been healed by the Guardian. It’s been two weeks since Adrien had cried into his mother’s arms, overjoyed to have her back. It’s been two weeks since the Agreste family finally started working on repairing themselves, bit by bit, into something warmer and closer than even before the tragedy that had befallen the matriarch.

It’s been one week since Chat Noir and Ladybug had revealed their identities to one another. They’ve been tiptoeing around their feelings for one another ever since. 

“You know,” Marinette says over a spoonful of peach ice-cream. “I technically don’t need to go to your photoshoots anymore. I’ve stopped therapy a while ago, you’re not in danger of getting punched any time soon.”

Adrien smiles toothily.

“What’s that, my Queen? Are you saying you _don’t_ want to drool all over my hot bod anymore?”

Adrien immediately scoots to the other end of the bench and snickers. He holds the ice-cream in front of himself in place of a shield as Marinette shakes a threatening fist at him, scowling.

“I’m sorry, Agreste, is that your way of asking for a black mask _outside_ the suit as well? Hold still, I think I could manage it if I aim right—”

“Alright, don’t you think that joke is getting old? That punch was a one time thing and we both know it. Now, if you _really_ wanted to get back at me, I assure you that a little kiss will leave me paralyzed for the rest of the week. Sounds much more effective, no?”

Marinette flashes a flirtatious smile, catching the boy off-guard. She scoots back into his space, pressing flush against his side, leaving him trapped between her and the armrest of the bench.

“Haven’t you heard, kitty? They say a kiss with a fist is better than none.”

He’s pretty sure the warmth of his hand is now hot enough to melt their ice-cream completely in the span of three minutes. Her face is close enough that he could easily lean down and…

“That’s a pretty one-sided deal,” Adrien murmurs. “Don’t you think?”

“Are you saying you want to punch me?”

The mood is ruined, and Adrien splutters out in protest. Marinette laughs and snatches the ice-cream cone from his hand before he can drop it, shoveling another spoonful into her mouth. 

Resting in Marinette’s purse, Tikki and Plagg roll their eyes together. 

“How long do you think it’s going to take before they finally work up the nerve?”

Tikki giggles at the question, patting her counterpart on the side sympathetically.

“They’ll get there, Plagg. They’ll get there.”

Eventually.

Eventually comes three days later, Marinette waking up to see him hovering over her bed, and instead of punching him in instinctual fright like she would have done months ago, she smiles dreamily, cups his cheeks, and pulls him down for a tender kiss.

And then she punches him when she realises she isn’t dreaming, and that she just kissed _Adrien Agreste_ , her partner, in nothing but an old tank top and her underwear.

“ _ **GET OUT**_ , I’M NOT DRESSED!”

“ _RIGHT_ , SORRY, I’LL LEAVE YOU TO IT, YOUR MOM’S DONE WITH BREAKFAST, _OKAY BYE NOW, SEEYOUDOWNSTAIRS—_ ”

… Well, it’s _one_ step in the right direction. 


End file.
